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Every now and again, it's useful to air one's most crowd-bucking, fight-picking position, if only to redirect the dominant conversation down a more interesting, and possibly even enlightening, path.

So here goes: For the economy and financial markets, the stakes in the coming presidential election are vastly lower than nearly everyone is making them out to be.

Every four years, both major U.S. parties and the political media feed the idea that Election Day is a crucial pivot point for the direction of the country and its economic fortunes. This time around, the overheated pre-game pep rallies and advance coverage of the rivalry might make this contention seem more convincing, given the frightening government debt totals, fragile world economy and fiscal decisions that will, by law, immediately greet the next administration and Congress.

Yet for essentially the same reasons, the stakes on Nov. 6 aren't all that high. For either a Romney presidency or a second Obama term, the fiscal math is the same. The debate isn't about whether long-term structural budget action is necessary, but of what sort and how fast. The divide over taxation, in the grand historical scheme of things, is about either a partial, incremental return to tax rates that prevailed not all that long ago, or a continuation of rates that have been in place the past few years. Not exactly make-or-break stuff.

Meanwhile, while few choose to say it, the debt-collector wolf isn't yet at the door. Total interest on Treasury debt, as a proportion of U.S. economic output, is substantially lower than it was in the early 1990s, when Ross Perot ran a one-issue campaign on deficit reduction. Obviously, any comfort derived from this fact is cold and temporary, given that any lasting rise in interest rates would bloat the interest burden painfully. For now, however, it's the reality.

Investors and the investment industry are braced for what potentially higher tax rates on capital gains and dividends might do to risk appetites. Yet investors' appetite for risk has been shrunk by bear markets and scary macroeconomic risks, under a relatively benign taxation scenario. And what has been just about the most popular investment choice by individuals in recent years? Corporate bonds, which are also just about the least tax-efficient.

This is not some version of the old "pox on both houses" or "all politicians are the same" mantras. It's merely an observation that the economic cycle and central-bank policies have a far greater ability to determine market outcomes than does the Electoral College.

Let's be straight about the strongest relationships between presidential elections and stock-market performance. First, for reasons probably involving quadrennial bipartisan pandering, election years have tended to be better than average for stocks, with strength concentrated in the years' second half. This even incorporates 2008, a nasty annum that proved historical tendencies are only that, and not guarantees. The most pronounced pattern is that the market has done best when the incumbent is re-elected, and worst in years when he's ousted.

So, the economic circumstances under which incumbents win (an improving economy, largely) are also hospitable for equity performance before and after the election. A notable exception was 1948, when Truman's victory was a true, unwelcome surprise to Wall Street. Yet 1936, when Roosevelt was re-elected four years after a financial crash amid high unemployment and sharp class-based economic arguments, was not. Note, too, that presidents' second terms tend to be less about ideological and legislative aggression than about legacy-grooming.

So it's no surprise that the S&P 500 has neatly tracked the "political futures market" for Obama's re-election chances. Some Wall Streeters have framed this year as a potential win-win, meaning that if the economy is OK enough for Obama to prevail, it's good for stocks, and if Romney wins, Wall Street's general preference for a Republican will fuel some buying enthusiasm. Maybe, but wise investors know that win-win scenarios can turn into lose-lose realities.

This isn't to suggest that the markets will sit quietly, ignoring the campaign's to-and-fro and putting off worrying about the year-end "fiscal cliff," or that individual sectors won't be big winners or losers, pending the election outcome.

It's just that this election is a tug-of-war over a narrower span of economic-policy turf than the typical headline reader is being led to believe, and events in Brussels or Beijing could turn out to be quite a bit more decisive for the fate of what remains a resilient U.S. stock market than who's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 21.